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06/10/2006 07:55:22 PM · #1 |
Just thought I share the processing of one of my images since I've gotten a few requests to do so. Below is the steps I used to produce this image:
Here are my editing steps done in Photoshop CS2:
1. Neatimage matched to profile settings all around 40%.
2. Cloned out light posts & power lines.
3. Moved the sidewalk and rails slightly to the right to line up better under the capitol building.
4. Curves (auto adjustment).
5. Gradient Map (black & slate color) set to soft light blending mode with a "highlights" mask (i.e. CTL ALT ~) applied.
6. Duplicated Gradient Map layer also set to "soft light" blending mode. This whole effect made the image darker in the shadows allowing the higlights to stand out more.
7. Cloned out a darker/wider shadow on the sidewalk so that the shadows from the rails were uniform.
8. Selective color to brighten the whites. Masked out some areas to avoid blow outs.
9. Shadow/Highlights applied via mask to brigthen some of the shadow areas along the vanishing point axis.
10. Cloned out some sensor dust.
11. Channel Mixer (set to monochrome, gray = 100%) with blending mode set to Luminosity to maintain color. This darken the blues in the sky while brightening the sidewalk putting more focus on the vanishing point area.
12. Gradient Map (black, white color) set to "luminosity". This darkened the shadows more and gave the image more contrast.
13. Curves used to brighten overall image (hump curve with point set near the top) then a mask was applied so that only the rails were brighten. The blending mode was set to "overlay".
14. Duplicated curves layer and set blending mode to normal. This brighten the rails even more.
15. Curves set to brighten the whole image even more. Used a mask to only apply the effects to certain areas of the buildings where I wanted stronger highlights.
16. Channel Mixer, again I used the monochrome setting with gray at 100%. The blending mode was set to "luminosity" to keep the image in color. This darken the sky even more while brightening the lower half of the image namely the sidewalk. The point of all this is to bring the eye to focus more on the lines leading up to the capitol building.
17. Selective Color was used in the clouds to bring out some more detail. I set white to 100% black which darken the whites a bit giving the clouds more depth. This could have been done via the burn tool.
18. Color Balance was used in the sky to get a bluer color. (midtones set to -15, 0, +22).
19. Noise Ninja was used for slight sharpening as well as a contrast boost and noise reduction.
20. Clone tool was used to remove some halo effects resulting from the selective color adjustment I used earlier that the color balance and noise ninja effects have amplified.
21. Shadow/Highlights was used again but with a left to right gradient (white/black) mask so that the effects would only apply on the left side, which is the direction the sun was located. This just made the light direction more apparent.
22. Perspective tool was used to correct the wide angle distortion on the buildings. I only applied the adjustment to the buildings and not the street.
23. Hue Saturation was used to adjust the blues. I set the saturation and ligtness to -100 and then set the layer blending to "luminosity" to maintain the color. This gave the blues a richer darker look.
24. Duplicated the Hue Saturation layer to double it's effect since you can only go as far done as -100 in the settings so this is essentially a -200 "desaturation" & "de-lightness" effect. As I did with the other layer I set the blending to "luminosity" to maintain color. This darken the blue further. The top right corner was getting too dark so I partially masked that out.
25. Clone tool was used again on some of the building tops to remove halos resulting from the Hue/Saturation adustiments.
26. Smart Sharpening was used as a last step then the border was added.
That's it.
Original Version
Alternative version up to step 16
If you have any questions feel free to ask. I'm also interested in any feedback and suggestions on what could have been done better.
Message edited by author 2006-06-10 19:59:16.
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06/10/2006 08:02:07 PM · #2 |
I meant to add no dodging or burning was used. Those effects that look like dodge and burn were accomplished via adjustment layers only.
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06/10/2006 08:05:20 PM · #3 |
Holy friggin' cow!! Did the city of Austin fine you for moving the sidewalk? I suspect you'd need a permit for that.
Seriously, that's some major heavy duty PS'ing - and an awesome result!! Wow. Really wow. |
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06/10/2006 08:31:14 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by Melethia:
Holy friggin' cow!! Did the city of Austin fine you for moving the sidewalk? I suspect you'd need a permit for that.
Seriously, that's some major heavy duty PS'ing - and an awesome result!! Wow. Really wow. |
Thanks. I talked to the mayor he said it was ok. :P
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06/10/2006 08:58:30 PM · #5 |
Originally posted by yanko:
Originally posted by Melethia:
Holy friggin' cow!! Did the city of Austin fine you for moving the sidewalk? I suspect you'd need a permit for that.
Seriously, that's some major heavy duty PS'ing - and an awesome result!! Wow. Really wow. |
Thanks. I talked to the mayor he said it was ok. :P |
Good thing this wasn't an entry, as I think the SC would be less forgiving than the mayor.
Nice work! Thanks for writing it up -- that's what the site's supposed to be about. FWIW I always put my editing steps in the photo details when I submit; too bad no one seems to want to know : ) |
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06/10/2006 09:25:59 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by yanko:
Thanks. I talked to the mayor he said it was ok. :P |
Good thing this wasn't an entry, as I think the SC would be less forgiving than the mayor.
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Aww, he just moved a sidewalk. He didn't add another sidewalk. Now that would be against the rules, I'm sure. ;-) |
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06/10/2006 09:46:48 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Thanks for writing it up -- that's what the site's supposed to be about. FWIW I always put my editing steps in the photo details when I submit; too bad no one seems to want to know : ) |
No don't say that nobody wants to know! Photographer's Comments are one of the most compelling features of DPC. Yanko, that is fabulous for you to share, you talk of places in PS that I've never seen - thank you so much.
My pet hate is ribbon winning images that have no comments. Sadly, it appears to be getting more and more common now. There's a certain implication of arrogance in that action of not sharing the development and execution of an image. It's almost as if they are saying "... vote for my beautiful image, fall about in awe of it and only dream of how it's done, because I am not going to share it with you ...". That they seek the accolades and the time voters take to consider, vote and comment but they do not reciprocate. This is very consistent in certain regular ribbon winners.
General (and everyone)keep sharing as this is what makes DPC so great.
Brett |
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06/10/2006 09:49:16 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by KiwiPix:
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Thanks for writing it up -- that's what the site's supposed to be about. FWIW I always put my editing steps in the photo details when I submit; too bad no one seems to want to know : ) |
No don't say that nobody wants to know! Photographer's Comments are one of the most compelling features of DPC. |
I only meant that no one seems too interested in mine ; )
Note that it is now site policy that you must fill in the details and exposure info if you want a Critique Club review.
Message edited by author 2006-06-10 21:50:34. |
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06/10/2006 10:02:51 PM · #9 |
My pet hate is ribbon winning images that have no comments. Sadly, it appears to be getting more and more common now. There's a certain implication of arrogance in that action of not sharing the development and execution of an image. It's almost as if they are saying "... vote for my beautiful image, fall about in awe of it and only dream of how it's done, because I am not going to share it with you ...". That they seek the accolades and the time voters take to consider, vote and comment but they do not reciprocate. This is very consistent in certain regular ribbon winners.
General (and everyone)keep sharing as this is what makes DPC so great.
Brett [/quote]
Amen Brett. I too believe that it should be required. I came here to learn and I have learned so much since I have been here. I look at the comments on every photo that attracts my attention. Even if it appears to be an everyday straight from the camera photo, a lot of times the minor tweaks are what makes a good photgraph great.
As for the photo here......WOW
Excellent image. You make us strive to be able to do the same in our own portfolios. |
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06/10/2006 10:18:14 PM · #10 |
Richard, that is a stunning result!!
Thank you so much for the effort of sharing that with us.
I have no idea if I'll ever find enough patience to go to SUCH lengths as you did, but you have inspired me to get out of my rut (of doing a few basic adjustments only) and try a few more buttons and sliders.
Message edited by author 2006-06-10 22:19:04. |
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06/10/2006 10:27:58 PM · #11 |
Nice work. Thanks for taking the time to share the details.
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06/18/2006 10:58:22 AM · #12 |
| thanks for sharing such a detailed explanation... will have to give it a go myself now :) |
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06/22/2006 02:27:03 PM · #13 |
Yanko
How in the world did you do step #3, "Moved the sidewalk and rail slightly to the right"? |
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06/28/2006 11:29:16 PM · #14 |
im still interested in the anwser to that question...
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06/28/2006 11:46:43 PM · #15 |
| That's very impressive, the finished photo is fantastic. I love the atmosphere that you've brought out with your pp, it just seems so much more big city and fabulous. |
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06/28/2006 11:52:30 PM · #16 |
| Thanks for the info. Really great editing, and would have bet my life that dodging and burning was used. Good for me to see that you can still get some great effects with proper use of adjustment layers. I'm definetly gonna have to watch this thread so when I get back to school and have access to photoshop, I can experiment with some of these techniques. Again, fantastic job! |
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06/29/2006 12:16:22 AM · #17 |
Originally posted by yanko:
Just thought I share the processing of one of my images since I've gotten a few requests to do so. Below is the steps I used to produce this image:
Original Version
Alternative version up to step 16
If you have any questions feel free to ask. I'm also interested in any feedback and suggestions on what could have been done better. |
I like this image a lot, particularly how you really did not make super dramatic changes yet, with a lot of post processing was able to make such a great final image. This shows the power of proper post processing when applied to an image that is good to start with.
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06/29/2006 01:25:18 AM · #18 |
Originally posted by Elmakias:
im still interested in the anwser to that question... |
I hadn't seen the rest of the posts in this thread so here is what I did to move the sidewalk. This was copied and pasted from an email I sent to David. See below:
First, I duplicated the layer with the pixels. We'll call this layer "Sidewalk". I then made a quick selection around the pixels I wanted to move. The way I did that was using the lasso tool. The selection was very rough and what I mean by that is I just took the lasso tool and drew a quick selection around the sidewalk which included getting parts of the trees and street in the selection even though I only wanted the sidewalk. The reason I did that was to give me some pixels to erase later on so I can blend it in with the rest of the image.
So once I had my selection I created a mask out of it by clicking on the mask button. That way only the pixels that I have selected will appear on the "Sidewalk" layer. I then nudged the pixels to the right so that the shadow of the guardrail lined up with the capitol building in the middle. If you look at the original that I have linked to in my comments you'll see it wasn't moved by much.
Once that was done all that was left was to blend in the edges of the selected area so that it fit in with the rest of the image. Accomplishing that was pretty easy. The part where the sidewalk met the road I just used a soft brush to erase the extra pixels of the street I included in the selection, which made that area blend in. When I originally made the selection which included part of the street I made sure not to include any cars or things like that.
Now, the more difficult parts to blend was the left and top area of the Sidewalk layer however that ended up being pretty easy because I just cropped the left side by the same amount I moved it by so I didn’t need to recreate pixels there. On the top side where the trees and building are I just use the same technique with the road. I took a soft brush and erased parts of the extra pixels I included in the selection so that it blended in. Basically, all I am doing here is just removing the sharp edges that a selection produces. Sometimes by just making a rough selection to include elements you don't want you can then erase those with a soft brush and it'll make the image blend in. Now sometimes when there are fine details involved that might not work perfectly but in cases like that I would use the clone tool to move whatever else was needed to achieve the desired alignment. However, here I didn't even need to do that as the guardrail provided a nice clean cutoff point, which I used as the point to erase everything above it (i.e. the extra pixels captured in the selection). In other words, that part didn't need to be blended in since the sharp edge of the guardrails is what I wanted to maintain not remove.
That's pretty much it. In summary, I duplicated the pixel layer, made a quick selection, moved it to the right and then blended it in by erasing part of what I selected and cropping on the left. Hope that makes sense. :)
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06/29/2006 02:01:52 AM · #19 |
| WOW, very nice Yanko. Now I know how shallow is depth of my PS knowledge. So much to learn!!! Thanks for sharing. |
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